Enhanced Place Specificity of the Parallel Auditory Brainstem Response: An Electrophysiological Study.

Purpose: This study investigates the effect of parallel stimulus presentation on the place specificity of the auditory brainstem response (ABR) in human listeners. Frequency-specific stimuli do not guarantee a response from the place on the cochlea corresponding only to that characteristic frequency - especially for brief and high-level stimuli. Adding masking noise yields responses that are more place specific, and our prior modeling study has suggested similar effects when multiple frequency-specific stimuli are presented in parallel. We tested this hypothesis experimentally here, comparing the place specificity of responses to serial and parallel stimuli at two stimulus frequencies and three stimulus rates.

Methods: Parallel ABR (pABR) stimuli were presented alongside high-pass filtered noise with a varied cutoff frequency. Serial presentation was also tested by isolating and presenting single-frequency stimulus trains from the pABR ensemble. Latencies of the ABRs were examined to assess place specificity of responses. Response bands were derived by subtracting responses from different high-pass noise conditions. The response amplitude from each derived response band was then used to determine how much individual frequency regions of the auditory system were contributing to the overall response.

Results: We found that parallel presentation improves place specificity of ABRs for the lower stimulus frequency and at higher stimulus rates. At a higher stimulus frequency, serial and parallel presentations were equally place specific.

Conclusion: Parallel presentation can provide more place-specific responses than serial for lower stimulus frequencies. The improvement increases with higher stimulus rates and is in addition to the pABR's primary benefit of faster test times.